State Sen. Josh McKoon on Wednesday called for Georgia to ban illegal immigrants from law practice and teaching in the state’s public schools, and he said the state should also keep a public registry of such immigrants who commit crimes.
The call for action against those McKoon calls “illegal aliens” — a term many Latinos consider derogatory — came after the fatal shooting of a woman in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times. The Republican from Columbus said he wanted to catch the attention of Georgians by using the publicity surrounding the shooting to draw outrage here.
“There are more illegal aliens in this state than Arizona,” McKoon said during a press conference in Atlanta. What happened in San Francisco, he said, “can and I fear will happen in Georgia.”
Flanked by several sheriffs or their representatives, including those from Cobb and Gwinnett counties, McKoon also said he would propose sanctions against counties and cities in Georgia that don't fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Such was the case in San Francisco. That city has an ordinance prohibiting authorities from cooperating with official requests called detainers. Detainers are issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold inmates believed to be in the country illegally for an additional 48 hours — excluding weekends and holidays — in order to give ICE time to take custody of them and attempt to deport them.
In Georgia, the sheriff ’s departments in Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton counties don’t comply with requests from the federal government to hold illegal immigrants beyond their scheduled release dates so they can face deportation.
“There should be no immigration ‘sanctuaries’ in cities and counties in this great state,” Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren said.
McKoon said the additional measures highlighted Wednesday would be added to existing legislation he has already sponsored at the state Capitol. Senate Bill 6, however, has already proved unpopular among his colleagues and has so far not received a hearing.
The original bill seeks to block access to driver’s licenses for people who have received work permits or whose deportations have been deferred through the federal deferred action program. A similar bill failed last year.
The government has granted deportation deferrals to 18,150 people in Georgia since 2012 through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That program applies to people who were brought here as young children, who are attending school here and who have not been convicted of felonies.
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